My West Baltimore neighborhood would eventually become famous as a symbol for Black anger. I spent my entire time in public schools, from Head Start through high school, seeing only one White student. Charlie.” I watched a White police officer savagely beat an unarmed Black woman in my backyard when I was about nine. People referred to White people as “crackers,” honkies” and “Mr. I grew up in an all-Black, inner-city neighborhood where that kind of racial hatred was enthusiastically returned.
I didn’t know what she looked like, or even if she was alive.Īll I was told was this: Your mother’s name is Shirley. She vanished from my life not long after I was born. I had grown up in Baltimore without ever knowing my mother.
But we both knew that his question was anything but casual. “Do you want to meet your mom?” he asked me. Pall Mall cigarette butts were mashed in a nightstand ashtray, and “The Price is Right” was playing on a black and white TV. He was sitting up in bed with his shirt off, his belly spilling over the waist of his greasy dungarees. I was 17, just months away from leaving home for college, when my father called me into his bedroom one afternoon. But I remember where I stood when it happened. I don’t remember what I said because I was too shocked to respond.
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